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Cultural Materialism, Split Inheritance, and the Expansion of Ancient Peruvian Empires

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Geoffrey W. Conrad
Geoffrey W. Conrad*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138
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Abstract

Archaeological and ethnohistoric data on the Chimu and Inca empires, two prehistoric Peruvian states that shared a number of organizational features, are used to test the theory of cultural materialism. Materialist explanations of Inca expansionism are evaluated; they are shown to be unconvincing in the Inca case and inapplicable to the Chimu. An alternative model is proposed that emphasizes the role of a particular legal principle, split inheritance. The presence of split inheritance in the two empires is documented. It is argued that in both cases split inheritance originated through manipulation of traditional elements of Andean ideology, was the driving force behind imperial expansion, and generated administrative and economic stresses eventually leading to imperial collapse. This model avoids the flaws of the materialist explanations it is intended to replace, and the theory of cultural materialism is rejected.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , January 1981 , pp. 3 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1981

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References

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